‘Under huge stress’: Open school students move Delhi HC as JEE-Mains counselling begins before their Class 12 results are out

“I’m under tremendous stress. My luck didn’t support me, it seems,” Om told The Indian Express. “With these marks, I could have gotten into DTU… It was my dream,” he said.

Aggrieved, Om, who belongs to the Economically Weaker Section (EWS), approached the Delhi High Court on May 28 seeking relief along with two other NIOS students who scored 91.66 percentile and 72.54 percentile (SC student). Their main grievance? That they are not even being allowed to appear provisionally before the Counselling Committee and are being discriminated against due to no fault of their own.

While the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE) have declared the results of the Class 12 examination, open school students have been left in the lurch, anxiously waiting for their results with every passing minute. The open school examinations concluded on May 19, while the JEE Mains result was out a month earlier, on April 18.

The petitioners moved the Delhi High Court against the Joint Admission Committee, which is a consortium of institutions for admission to undergraduate programmes in Delhi government-funded premier universities offering engineering and architecture programmes. The admissions are done on the basis of the rank of students in the JEE Mains exam. The four participating institutions are offering 6,491 seats in engineering this year.

“In the past, JAC released their schedule for Counselling in a manner so that the last date of applying in the Counselling is post the declaration of Class XII result by NIOS. This was done in order to accommodate the students of Class XII, who appeared through open school, so that they can actively participate in the JAC Counselling and compete with the students from the other boards,” read the plea moved by the three students who were represented in court by advocates Ankit Singh Sinsinwar, Ravi Kumar and Dhananjay.

“However, to the shock and surprise of Petitioners, commencement of Online registration and choice filling was to be done from 21.05.2025 (May 21) and last date and time for Online registration and choice filling was 02.06.2025 (June 6), till 10.30 pm,” stated the plea, while seeking relief.

“If the Petitioners are denied the opportunity to even participate in the Counselling process, their whole year shall get wasted and it cannot be even explained the mental trauma and anxiety they would undergo for not even being allowed to sit in the Counselling process, without any fault of theirs,” it added.

The counselling for JAC universities will go on for five rounds. After the five rounds are concluded, a registration portal and choice filling/editing portal will be opened on June 19 by the JAC as a one-time measure. However, the petitioners will not be able to seek this relief as well as their results are likely to be out after June 20.

The Class 12 marksheet is relevant only to the extent that it assesses the minimum qualifying marks which are 60 per cent or more for the BTech courses offered by NSUT and DTU and 70 per cent for the same courses at IIIT-Delhi.

In the plea, the petitioners have also cited the example of the Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA) which has been set up by the Ministry of Education to manage and regulate the joint seat allocation for admissions to 127 institutes across the country, including 23 IITs and 31 NITs. The JoSAA allows candidates to participate in the counselling process in case the Class 12 results are awaited, subject to them providing the relevant documents at the time of admission.

Close to 1.5 lakh students appeared for NIOS exams across India. The Delhi High Court, meanwhile, reserved its order on May 30.

“This is the first time the JAC has done this… It was totally unexpected. I am hoping we can get relief from the high court,” Om said.